


The Witch of Hazelmere

by Ellipsical



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, F/F, Femlock, It's my first time writing Victorianlock so just keep that in mind, genderbent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 18:41:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14314785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellipsical/pseuds/Ellipsical





	The Witch of Hazelmere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sussexbound (SamanthaLenore)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamanthaLenore/gifts).



When I was first sent to live with you at Hazelmere they warned me you were a witch.

I walked up the hill from the village, waded through your fields sown wild with thistle and thyme and betony and hyssop and sage and rue and every other sort of flower and herb I didn’t yet know the name of, and there was your cottage sitting in the plum purple shade of an elm grove.The bees were busy among the swaying waist-high blossoms, making their mazy way back to your hives, bodies laden with nectar, where they would make you honey and comb. I forgot, for a moment, the pain in my leg as I made my way through that fragrant verdant sea. There were caterpillars and catkins and ladybugs caught in my skirts when once I emerged and stepped gingerly onto your garden path with it’s wayward crooked stones which caught my cane and sent me tripping in an ungainly manner to your door.

You did not answer all three of my knocks though I could tell by the curl of smoke from your chimney that you were home.

I went around the side, skirting your vegetable garden and the roses that grew rampant over the south facing wall of your house, peering in through windows, half-expecting to catch you bent over your cauldron, murmuring spells.

But you were simply contrary, lounging in your armchair with your pipe in one hand and a book in the other and a dreamy far off look in your eyes as you contemplated the mantle. It was a look I would soon learn not to interrupt, but that first time I knew no better and sharply rapped my knuckles to the window pane and brought you startled from it.

You were sullen and scowling when I met you at the door.

“I’m Joanna Watson,” I said, offering my hand, to which you simply grunted and turned, blue tinged tobacco smoke steaming behind you as you made your way back to your chair.

I stepped inside that shadowed, hazy house and shut the door, locking the dazzle of a brilliant spring day outside.

I could see why women whispered about you behind your back. You lived like a man, without scruple or compunction. Your walls were lined with shelves and stuffed to bursting with books. Stacks of newspapers were piled in corners with tables crammed full of chemistry equipment littering the large front room. You wore high waisted trousers and a waistcoat over your shirt instead of a corset beneath and you went about barefoot and wore your curls cropped short so that they fairly rioted around your thin white face. Your eyes were intense, a pale silvery blue, and thickly lashed and you were long and thin with none of the trappings of femininity aside from the lovely bow of your mouth and the grace with which you moved. 

You curled into your armchair like a cat, drawing your feet up onto the seat, and regarded me with the same feline stare.

“I was sent by Martha Hudson,” I said, letting my gaze roam over the chaos and clutter. “She said you’re in want of someone to keep your house.”

“And why did she send you?” you drawled, indolent, a plume of smoke curling from your lips.

“Pardon me?” My eyes snapped back to your face.

“You? Why did she send you?” You pointed the stem of your cherrywood pipe at me as if in accusation.

“I don’t understand.”

You rolled your eyes as if I was simple. When you spoke you enunciated each word. “You’re educated. Served in the war as a…” You paused a moment before pronouncing with uncanny accuracy, “…a surgical nurse. I suspect only your sex held you back from becoming a surgeon yourself. You’re overqualified to be a housekeeper. Therefore, Miss. Watson, I would like to know why you are here.”

“I suppose it is because a crippled nurse is no use to anyone.”

You watched me.

And even though I was tempted to turn and leave, to take my dignity and go back to beg work somewhere else, there was a bigger part of me who wanted to stay and share this strange and unfettered life of yours. I wanted desperately to know your secrets and pour your tea and pack your pipe with shag. I wanted the pollen stains on my palms and black dirt wedged under my nails and the wind in my hair; the prick of bee stings and rose thorns on my thumbs. I wanted to wander down that winding forest path I’d glimpsed out back, down to the mere for which your cottage was named and feel the chill of it burn me, bone deep so that my very marrow sung with it’s cold fire. I had never met anyone like you. I wanted desperately to stay.

 

**********

 

You let me.

And much to my delight and bewilderment, you wouldn’t let me tidy a thing. There was a system to which even the dust had a purpose and which I was not to disturb. You called me Watson and I called you Holmes and I kept you in slippers and tea and tobacco and fetched for you when you couldn’t be arsed to leave whatever pretty Sisyphean problem you were ruminating on that day. Otherwise, I was left to my own devices.

I slept. I caught up on all the hours I had lost to the war years and to the years of nightmares that followed in their wake. I had a mattress of softest lumpiest cloud and a thick duvet of swaddling down in a room not much bigger than a closet with no furniture save a wardrobe and a bed. The window above my headboard looked out on the border of witch hazel shrubs and lilac brush which provided a home to a family of thrushes which woke me with their sweet chatter each morning.

I healed. Poring over seed catalogues and becoming enamoured of the picture in my head. I grew stronger, soon eschewing the cane unless I needed to walk into town. I weeded and coaxed yarrow and sweet william and peonies and foxglove, catmint and violets and lavender from the earth. I soon donned trousers almost as often as you. They were better suited to mucking about in wellies and gardening gloves. I saw why they called you witch. You brewed potions, it was true. But they were simply tonics and ointments you experimented with and which you entrusted Mrs. Hudson to sell for you in town. You claimed to let cold reason rule your life, but you lived in a perpetual state of wonder at the natural world that belied your ardent protestations to the contrary. You had a particular soft spot for your bumbling bees and the flowers which kept them happy and industrious.

I would, more often than not, as spring bled into summer, find you sitting in the garden bathed in cool morning sunlight with your eyes closed, listening to the living hum of the world waking. You hadn’t yet been to bed and your hair was a wild black thicket and your chilled fingers smelled of rosin and were strafed raw from plucking your violin struts aimlessly all the night long. When I would crouch beside you and ply you with the promise of a soft boiled egg and buttery toast, whispered into your dear, exhausted, upturned face, most times you would smile and take my hand and follow me back into the house, meek as milk.

We pored over the newspaper together while we ate and conversed as equals. I felt a keen pleasure in the freedom to be myself and speak my mind. I liked the labyrinthine way your mind worked and while I could not track your brilliance it did not dull the dramatic way you unearthed the real story within the world’s sordid machinations or the gossip I brought you from the village and presented it as if it were the simplest of deductions. I liked the way your mouth curved so coyly as you approached the climax and the sharp light that glittered in your eyes as you watched my flummoxed expression and the way you fairly glowed with a rosy blush when I laughed and applauded each time you finished with a magician’s flourish.

You were a marvel. Taciturn and sulky and infuriating and lovely and kind and intelligent and genuine all at once.

I became a part of the house, like the pipe and the violin and the beehives and the books. I was necessary. I had purpose. It is not going too far to say I was beloved, as all of the other institutions were.

And in turn, I loved you back.

It was winter when you realised it. Those long dark nights in front of the fire, you finally saw what had been plain as day since August at least. Our legs stretched out, our feet tangled together, socked toes curled towards the warmth. Brandies drank, the violin played and discarded on the rug beside you, the sough of book pages turned. I was handing down my half drunk tea cup for you to finish, as was our habit when you were bored and sat at the foot of my chair and annotated the margins of Kant. Your hair was shining in the firelight, crimson threads snaking through the wine dark strands, and without thought I reached out and stroked it. As if I had any right to do so. As if I had any claim. It was as natural to me as breathing and you tipped your head into my touch, pressing the soft silky weight of your curls into my hand. How long did we stay that way before you jerked away and looked over your shoulder at me and finally saw everything?

It was a quiet three weeks before it came to a head.

We had been out in the cold, tending the hives at the far end of the mere, making sure they were sealed tight with beeswax and that the mice hadn’t gotten into them, when we had gotten caught in a sudden storm. There was luckily a shack not far from us, about a half miles walk. It housed random beekeeping supplies, rusting rakes and other abandoned gardening knick-knackery, including a hollowed out bench with two woolen picnicking blankets folded inside.

It smelled of leaf mold and iron but was dry and didn’t leak. Weak afternoon light streamed in through the one window set high up in the back wall. Outside the storm raged around us and showed no signs of stopping. One glance out the door, which looked out over the pond, told me all I needed to know. The path home was a mudslide. We would have to wait it out. I told you in my sternest Nurse Watson tones to strip off your wet things and you uncharacteristically complied without argument. I turned my back and did the same. We wrapped ourselves in the blankets and sat next to each other on the bench, shivering.

“I saw you,” you said, in that dim, thunder-rent space. “You with the widow Bromley. You should be more careful. People will talk.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, confused.

“You flirt, Watson. It comes as naturally to you as being blonde or, or, the knack you have for commandeering my violin and ordering me to bed.”

I chuckled at that, but still couldn’t quite follow your train of thought. “And what makes you think that people are talking about me and the widow Bromley?”

“People do little else.”

I looked over at you then. You were pale in the pearl gray light, your eyes holding mine without artifice. I saw then, what you were really saying to me. Fear sluiced through me, hard and bright.

“Do you want me to go?”

“Watson—“

“I wouldn’t want to bring this to your doorstep. Not when you’ve been… not when you’ve given me so much.”

“Watson, will you stop—“

“I can find work in town. I’m better now. I—“

“Oh, will you shut up you daft cow!”

I closed my mouth and raised my eyebrows at you. You shook your head as if to clear it.

“I am not proposing that you leave. I am proposing that it would be safer for us both if we moved to London. Two women housing together in the city is far less conspicuous than two women co-habitating in the country.”

“But—“

“Mrs. Hudson has a property in Baker Street that should suit our needs.”

“How long have you been planning this?” I asked, rather shocked at the extent to which things had already proceeded.

“For some weeks now.”

“Holmes, I don’t know what to say!”

You stood then, abruptly, and began to pace the ground in front of the bench.

“You will say yes,” you said, your voice low and fierce. “You, you, you, I cannot breathe now without you, you see?” I didn’t, I’m sure I looked shell-shocked at this admission from you and it spurred you on. “I’ve become accustomed to you, Watson. It is unbearable to me to think of you, of you cosseting some other woman,” you spluttered, colour staining your cheeks red.

“Oh, I see. You cannot bear to see me wait hand and foot on someone else, is it?”

“The facts, Watson! Stick to the facts as I have set them out before you!” you exclaimed, clearly desperate for me to see.

“All I see is that you want to keep your servant, who you’ve just admitted you cannot breathe without, by the way, and that you’re afraid the widow Bromley is, is. Oh.”

You pressed your lips together and turned an uncomfortable shade of puce.

“Oh, Sherlock.” I rarely used your first name and I could see the effect it had on you. “Come here.”

When you did not move, I reached out and took your hand, tugging you forward until you were perched stiffly across my knees.

“Sherlock, Claire Bromley is a lovely woman,” I began softly, to which you huffed. “And she makes a delicious roast on Sundays and those soaps she makes with your rose oil and honey are truly wonderful, but I’m not in love with her.”

“No?”

I shook my head and leaned just the slightest bit forward until my mouth was just brushing the edge of your ear. You trembled.

“There’s only one woman I want to cosset.”

“Watson.”

I nuzzled your cheek. “Holmes.”

“So you will come to Baker Street with me?”

Your skin was velvet and I could smell the sweet musk of your body rising through the wet wool and there were beads of rain caught in your hair. It was making me dizzy. “If that is what you think is best.”

“It is safest. Here, I cannot protect you. In London it is easier.”

“But how will we afford it?”

“I’ve written to a detective I know at Scotland Yard. A man I used to tail a bit when I was at university. I’m thinking of starting a private detective agency and I’ve asked him to send cases my way.”

“A detective agency.”

“I will make it work. Watson, I will not, I _cannot_ , live without you.”

“You do not have to.”

“I—“ but the end of your sentence was lost as your teeth began to clack together noisily.

“Sherlock, you’re cold.”

“Well, it’s bloody freezing and I—“

“Come on then, I’ll share mine. Get up, get up.”

“Watson, you’re naked under there!”

“Yes, and so are you. Two choices, get into bed with me or catch pneumonia.”

“But, but—“

I whipped my blanket off and spread it out on the ground. You gaped at me as I knelt on it.

“Watson!”

I pulled on the hem of your blanket and you stumbled forward and down until you were kneeling in front of me. The blanket had slipped off one of your shoulders and a thin line of white skin peeked out from where you were clutching it to your chest.

You blinked at me, flushed and breathless and so, so lovely. I let you look.

“Sherlock, lie down.”

You did, your teeth chattering wildly. I lay next to you, covered in a sheet of prickling gooseflesh and waited.

Eventually your arm came up and you shifted closer, tucking the edge of it over my shoulder. The heat of your body hit mine and rolled down the length of it in a hot stinging lash.

“Tell me.”

“Tell you what?” We were whispering.

“Tell me what the widow Bromley would do next.”

I think you expected me to laugh, but I didn’t. “I’d rather know what Sherlock Holmes would do. What she _wants_ to do.”

“Watson,” you said dryly, “I’m afraid I’m rather out my depth here.”

I licked my lips. The nervous energy rippling through you made much more sense now.

“Have you never…?”

“No.”

“Never?”

You leaned forward and kissed me then. Patience never was your strong suit. Your mouth parted sweetly against mine and you pressed yourself into my arms, flush against me, and we both shuddered and gasped. I could feel the incredible heat of you beating against my thigh as our legs tangled together.

“Touch me,” you said. “Touch me, Jo.”

You took my hand and guided it between your legs.

“Sherlock,” I breathed, your skin sliding slick and warm beneath my fingertips. I spread my fingers into your folds, dipping down where you were dripping wet into my palm. I thumbed over where you were hard and you moaned into my mouth, pushing down onto my hand. I dipped two fingers just inside and felt your walls clench and spasm around me, as I rubbed you in small constant circles up above. You kissed me frantically, your hands gripping the back of my head and I felt the moment you came in a silent cry a few seconds later, your forehead digging into mine.

“Jesus Christ,” you gasped, when you could, collapsed against me and breathing into my neck. I stroked your back and rocked forward against your leg which was trapped between my own. I made a small sound, involuntary and needy, and you put your hand to the small of my back and urged me to do it again. It didn’t take long. I was so close. From the ripe scent of your body and the supple push of your lips and your tongue, and the way your breasts with your tight, hard nipples brushed against mine…

“That wasn’t at all how I saw this going,” you said, later, as we put our damp clothes back on in the waning light of early evening. There was a break in the storm and we needed to take advantage of it while we could.

“All of your scheming suggests otherwise,” I teased. “A flat in London already leased. A business with clients already booked.”

“No, I meant…” You gestured to the pile of rumpled blankets that lay on the ground, blushing prettily.

“Ah, well, you should have. Me being the notorious flirt of the village, and all.”

You smiled and my chest ached and I was happy. Truly, giddily, happy.

We stood for a moment in the doorway, looking out on the mere.

“Won’t you miss it?” I asked, knowing that I would. “What will happen to your bees?”

You shrugged and took my arm as you had so many times before when we went for walks. Soon we would both be walking the cobblestones of London beneath it’s fog soaked skies.

“Perhaps the widow Bromley will look after them. She does so covet my honey for her soaps,” you said, looking down at me through slanted eyes.

I kissed you three, four, eleven times on the walk back up the path.

I kissed the witch of Hazelmere and fell thoroughly, utterly under her spell. 


End file.
